By JOE LAPOINTE

Published: September 16, 1997

With some gruff bluster and a little bit of chutzpah, Gary Bettman waved his expired passport at people in uniforms as he talked and walked his way in and out of Switzerland.

It was a small hurdle for Bettman on the way to the biggest international deal of his young administration.

This was in March 1995, and Bettman, the National Hockey League commissioner, had just finished dealing with a labor lockout that delayed the start of the 1994-95 season for 15 weeks. Now he was traveling from New York to Geneva, hoping to arrange the participation of N.H.L. players in the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

Bigger obstacles lay ahead. Among players, bitter feelings from the lockout lingered. Canadian hockey officials would feel pushed aside in the Olympics discussions, perceiving a pro-European bias. And Bettman, who would have to shut his league down to accommodate Olympic participation, knew he had to negotiate a shorter hockey tournament in Nagano. A long shutdown would be a deal breaker.

Through international cooperation and despite some contentious infighting, these problems and more were solved. The payoff, for Bettman and his sport, could come this winter, when the best professional players will stock the hockey tournament in Nagano. They will make up a half-dozen ''Dream Teams'' of similar strength competing on the world's biggest stage.

The participants should include Brian Leetch of the Rangers, playing for the United States; Eric Lindros of the Philadelphia Flyers for Canada; Jaromir Jagr of the Pittsburgh Penguins for the Czech Republic; Petr Forsberg of the Colorado Avalanche for Sweden; Sergei Fedorov of the Detroit Red Wings for Russia, and Teemu Selanne of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks for Finland.

Creating an N.H.L. presence in the Olympics was an important step for the league and the Olympic tournament. As more European stars flowed into the N.H.L. in the 1990's, many of the world's best players no longer participated in the Games, as they had before the fall of Europe's Communist governments. While other Olympic sports were including more professionals, and therefore providing their best talent, hockey was moving in the other direction, serving up more amateurs and marginal professionals.

Nothing dramatized the discrepancy more than the participation of the United States' Dream Team of National Basketball Association stars in the 1992 Summer Games.

''The National Basketball Association's worldwide awareness grew dramatically after the participation of the Dream Team,'' said Bettman, who was an N.B.A. executive during the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona, Spain. ''We're going to get exposure like the world has never seen for hockey. This is about 120-plus of the world's elite hockey players playing for pride and playing for their countries. It will give us a tournament of high magnitude. It will be quite compelling.''

During the Olympics, the league will shut down for 17 days, an unprecedented hiatus that entails numerous calculated business risks. With the Olympic hockey games relegated to late-night television, with the national teams hastily thrown together, and with the fans back home without their regular N.H.L. teams to follow, the whole plan could backfire and be remembered as another slip on the ice for a sport that never seems to find as broad an audience in the United States as its big-league competition.

Something to Offer For Everyone

With these goals and concerns in mind, Bettman went to Geneva to meet with Juan Antonio Samaranch, the president of the International Olympic Committee. Also attending were Rene Fasel, the president of the International Ice Hockey Federation, the sport's world governing body, and Bob Goodenow, the executive director of the N.H.L. Players Association. During the lockout, Goodenow had been Bettman's primary adversary, but now they were on the same page. It became clear to all, for the first time, that their plan had a good chance of success.

Participation by the best hockey players would enhance the value of the Olympic product that Samaranch and the I.O.C. sell to television networks. It would raise Fasel's stature and bring him closer to the inner circle of I.O.C. politics.

It would help Bettman promote his league during a robust decade filled with arena building, expansion franchises, bigger television contracts and rapid movement into Sunbelt cites. And it would help Goodenow's union members by raising their global profile and market value.

But resentment from the lockout remained. Fasel learned this when he tried to sell the Olympic concept to N.H.L. players at a resort near San Diego in the summer of 1995. During the lockout, Fasel and the federation had opposed the initial attempts of locked-out players to seek temporary employment in European leagues.

Marty McSorley, a rugged defenseman and strong union spokesman, confronted Fasel at that meeting before several dozen fellow players.

''He shouted a little bit,'' Fasel recalled. ''He said, 'Hey, why were you against the N.H.L. player coming and playing in Europe during the lockout?' It was a good question. I was really confused and in big trouble at that moment.''